


The Beholder

by mautadite



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin
Genre: Fairy Tale Elements, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-04
Updated: 2016-10-04
Packaged: 2018-08-19 13:00:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,500
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8209444
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mautadite/pseuds/mautadite
Summary: They tell her that it is a gift.
(Selyse as Rapunzel, childhood to present.)





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [attaccabottoni](https://archiveofourown.org/users/attaccabottoni/gifts).



> Written for round fifteen of the GOT exchange. Prompt: _Give characters Disney princess traits. [...] Selyse used to have seventy feet long golden hair._ Only very loosely based on the Disney adaptation. Please enjoy!  <3

They tell her that it is a gift.

Selyse is born in the height of summer, when the banks of the Honeywine are sprouting fat flowers and the trees are hanging heavy with fruit, soon to be overripe. Her father remains in the birthing room long enough to register disappointment that his wife has not borne him a son, and her mother has long passed out from exhaustion. It is only the midwives who crowd around the babe, marvelling at the unnatural golden tint of her downy hair.

By the next week, it curls around her ears. In a few months, the ringlets fall to her shoulders. The hue far outshines the pale flax of her mother’s, and is worlds away from the dull brown of her father and the rest of her House. If Ryam Florent were a different, less trusting man, he might suspect his little wife. But she is a pious woman, utterly devoted to him and to the Seven, and her mind is made up. 

Little Selyse is blessed. Touched by the sun. 

*

At seven, they take her off to see the king.

Her hair has not stopped growing; by now, the tips trail on the ground far after her if left hanging free. To Selyse, her hair is more of a nuisance more than anything, getting trapped and tangled at the slightest provocation, dragging at her tender scalp. Her mother will not permit even the thought of shears, but she also will not permit vanity, and so there isn’t a prideful bone in her body as she struggles up the steps to the Red Keep, the Warden of the South on her right, her father on her left.

The throne room is massive, and all the nobles seem to be sized to fit, towering over her as they look on with undisguised interest. It makes Selyse want to stand straighter and move slower; she is no stranger to scrutiny, and already knows that she mislikes being cowed. Her hair is loose and flowing, with braids and flowers and tiny vines running through the burnished gold; the product of two hours, four maids, and her mother’s careful eye. She hears of the quiet rustle of it against the red carpet as she treads down the hall of dragonbone and stone.

At the foot of the throne, she drops into her best curtsy, while her father and the Lord Tyrell fall to their knees. The young king looks down at them. There is something very spider-like about him, with his long thin fingers and swaying silver hair, sitting in his iron web of swords. At once, Selyse doesn’t like him, wishes more than ever that she didn’t have to meet him. She wishes, but she knows better than to think that that matters.

Lord Tyrell is speaking, but King Aerys quiets him with a wave.

“So this is she,” he says, with more of a smile in his voice than Selyse had imagined. It doesn’t endear him to her. “The golden flower of the Reach.”

No one speaks for a moment, and Ser Ryam fumbles to fill the space.

“Yes, your grace.” He keeps his head deeply bowed as he speaks; Selyse looks on with faint curiosity. She has never seen her father quite like this. “My first born.”

“I had heard. And your sons do not…?”

The king’s eyes flick over their heads, presumably to where Imry and Erren stand with their mother near the back of the procession.

“Ah, no, your grace. They were not… similarly afflicted.”

“Pity.” His purple eyes are back on Selyse, somewhat sharp. “Come here, child.”

She’s prepared for this, the eventuality of the king wanting to take a closer look. Selyse gathers her skirts, keeps her eyes downcast, and takes a few steps up towards the throne. She hears footsteps approaching; the king is meeting her halfway. Selyse is tall for her age, and he is shorter than she had expected, but everything about his presence makes her feel very small.

He puts his hands to her hair, lifts it, rubs the strands between his fingers, brings a long lock up to his eyes for further inspection. Selyse stands stock still under the assessment. She wonders what her mother might be thinking, watching the King of Westeros run his hands through her holy hair.

“Remarkable,” he says, and puts a jewelled finger beneath her chin to raise it to his face. Her father is saying something in reply, but Selyse can’t parse it, not with the king’s eyes boring into her. “And it hasn’t stopped growing? You might almost say some of the lost magic has come back into the world.”

Lord Tyrell’s voice swells out, booming with pride.

“You flatter us, your grace.”

“Do I?” He’s still looking at Selyse’s face, tilting it this way and that. “Oh dear. Not much of a flower without the petals, is she?”

There’s a smattering of laughter from all within hearing, including her father. Selyse knows that she isn’t expected to reply, and doesn’t.

The visit is a short one. Selyse endures a few more minutes of scrutiny, is made to kiss the king’s hand, and then they are hurried off as the court’s business moves along. Selyse rubs the back of her head when they are free from his presence, scalp sore from where the king had casually yanked out a few strands. That night, as her maids ready her for bed, it’s not difficult to understand the king’s remark. Her hair is brushed back, rivers of gold from her pallid skin, and Selyse stares at her utterly ordinary face in the mirror. Pinched lips, thin nose, watery eyes, prominent ears. The Florent look.

Selyse wonders if the gods look at her, and laugh.

*

Within the year the length of her hair doubles, and by the end of the next year, it triples. Selyse feels like her life is ordered around hair. Her father enjoys the attention from his peers and his betters, the trickles of fame that come with every foot of new growth. Her mother enjoys taking her to various houses of the Seven and hearing the septons opine about her gift, praying with her and thanking the gods for their blessing. She dotes on Selyse’s hair, urges her to take care of it, lectures the maids on how to do so. 

It’s a shock when she dies, taken out of the world alongside her fourth babe. Selyse is numb because she doesn’t know how else to respond; it is the biggest shock of her young life. That same numbness carries through when her father takes a bad tumble off his horse in the woods near Honeyholt a few months later, and breaks his neck on the fall.

“The Stranger never strikes once if he can help it,” say her aunts and uncles, along with other equally pithy dictums. 

The burials are solemn affairs; her father’s perhaps a little less so because of all the men and all the drink. Selyse wonders if she is expected to cut her hair in her grief. It is the done thing, after all, and she can’t imagine another occasion more deserving of the gesture. It’s not difficult to imagine heavy shears cutting through the bright locks, an immediate fifty foot weight off her shoulders. It’s a little more difficult to see herself, _afterwards_. Selyse’s stomach twists unpleasantly to think of it. What would she be, without…

Regardless, it is a moot point. Her lady aunt Melara reacts with her hand to throat upon hearing the question, as if Selyse had uttered blasphemy most vile. To bring it up with her uncle after that would only be foolish, she decides. Selyse remains with a burning golden beacon beneath the shroud of her mourning clothes, the light of it glinting through the black.

If anything at all, it feels sacrilegious. The ironies of piety seem many, she considers, and begins packing her trunks for Brightwater Keep.

*

They tell her that she’s lucky.

There is no limit to how much her hair will grow if left unattended; by fourteen, that much is clear. A part of Selyse only wants to let it grow just to see when it might stop. It never does. When unpinned, her hair leaves a long golden path that remains in rooms long after she’s vacated them. In low light it seems to burn, in daylight it is blinding, and always, it attracts eyes to her like moths to their deaths.

It’s becoming easier, or at least somewhat less difficult to manage. The strands seem far lighter, more inclined to slide against rather than wrap around each other, and if she were a fanciful girl she might say that they respond to her touch. There isn’t room for a touch of fancy in her, but she’s practical enough to see that she can accomplish what others do in far less time. Now, she only keeps one maid, and between them, they can have the entire length of it brushed and braided in just over an hour.

Her room at Brightwater Keep is no larger than most, but she learns to manoeuvre amidst and around the coils of her hair. During the day, when she attends her lessons, visits the sept and takes walks, she pins the braid up with a mountain of pins to lessen its length, and is followed by a maid who carries most of the weight. Lady Melara sees that she has a large chaise next to her bed, upon which she coils her hair at night. The bulk of it certainly cannot fit on her bed, especially when Melessa and Rhea often slip into her room at night and steal under her covers. 

After living with them for four years, Selyse thinks that her cousins are incurably silly, but bearable. Melessa especially has a sort of softness about her that puts Selyse on edge; she seems to ready to submit, to appease, all marks of a perfect gentlewoman that Selyse is more than aware she lacks. Stiff, standoffish, cold; those are the words that have been clinging to her since the age of six, and she hasn’t done much to attempt to change any minds. Selyse isn’t interested in being cowed.

Rhea and Melessa don’t seem to mind her company however, and at night they’ll crowd around her hair, touch it as much as she permits (which isn’t very much) and bombard her with questions.

“And it really isn’t heavy?” little Rhea says, eyes round and glistening in her soft face. Both sisters have escaped the Florent look, and favour their mother.

“If it hurts, I’ve gotten used to it,” Selyse says shortly. She crosses her long legs and leans back against a single pillow; her cousins have pilfered the rest to makes themselves a little nest.

“Are you sure you don’t need help washing it? Just this once?” Melessa has a sweet, charming smile, like that of the Maiden herself, but Selyse is far too used to it to be impressed. And they’ve both asked this many times.

“As I’ve said, you’d only get in the way. Elsie and I manage fine.”

“Oh, I know, but…” Rhea pouts good-naturedly. “There’s just so much of it!”

“Very observant,” Selyse says. The sheer mass makes it ridiculous to attempt washing it more than once per fortnight, and sometimes, she waits even longer. The spectacle that follows is always tiresome; she and her maid will spread out in the garden on linens to brush and sun it out, and it never fails to draw a little crowd from the keep. It’s frustrating, that even something as simple as that has to be shared with the public eye.

“Do you even _like_ it?” Rhea presses, the furrows in her forehead showing prominently in the low light.

“Liking it has nothing to do with it,” Selyse replies with a snap. She doesn’t expect Rhea to understand, but that doesn’t curb her annoyance.

“But you’re so _lucky_. You have a golden river attached to your head, it’s like some kind of _magic_ , and if not for it you’d be—”

“ _Rhea_ ,” Melessa interrupts sharply, ever the arbiter. Selyse feels her pang of irritation grow; she doesn’t need a caretaker. She doesn’t need to be shielded from the word ‘ugly’.

“It is what it is,” she says, and sinks down to lie stiffly on her side, back turned to them. If they wish to leave, they can; more likely, they will fall asleep next to her like they always do, and in the morning the argument will be forgotten. Her rope of hair lies nestled on its bed of downy pillows, and long after she closes her eyes, the print of it burns into Selyse’s mind.

*

She finds out quite by accident. A finger badly pricked during needlework, left unattended because she was not hindered by the pain, and then later in her room, the same finger is used to pull the strands of loose golden hair from her brushes. Selyse does this religiously; many a young lordling, servant, and village boy have been punished for attempting to snip off bits of her hair, and she wouldn’t put it past some of them to attempt to pilfer her brushes. What they would do with them, she doesn’t quite know. But the thought of anyone taking her hair like the king did, yanking it away from her, makes her tense and uncomfortable. She watches the golden strands sparkle and crack and smoke in the fireplace.

Today, as she runs her finger through the bristles, Selyse feels a tingle on the forgotten wound. Absently, she brings the finger up to her face, and what she sees there makes her heart leap.

Nothing.

She takes a moment. Calms her breathing. Smooths her skirts. Locks her door.

Then she tries it again. She cuts a clean nick into the palm of her hand, and pulls a coil of her hair free form the braid to wrap around it. Her heart thumps loudly in the intervening seconds. When she pulls her hair away, red is soaking through the gold to create a burnished copper, but the wound is still there. Next Selyse grabs a clump of her old hair, presses it against the cut. After a few seconds pass, she feels the strange sensation, and she knows what’s going to happen. Healed. She shudders, makes a new cut, applies the same clump of hair to it. Nothing. She pulls a few more strands from the brush, and repeats her experiment. The prickles run up and down her hand, and the cut closes up.

Selyse burns the old strands, washes the blood out of her hair, and then sits on her bed, rubbing her temple with her newly healed palm. Discomfort is roiling in her belly, and she knows the feeling, and she hates it. 

Fear.

She never thought her mother might be right. Blessed by the gods in a real, tangible and terrifying way. She has no idea what it means. She has no desire to _know_ what it means. Resentment is boiling within her, because she doesn’t want this, she’s young but she feels so old and she knows what this can lead to, what it would lead to for anyone. Selyse sees herself being dragged off to the Great Sept of Baelor to be prodded and tested. She sees herself burning alive atop a pyre, screaming her way to death. The two images flicker madly back and forth in her mind, because she knows them to be equally viable. 

Her nails dig into her palms. She feels unhinged, uncollected in a way she never does. Everyone tells her she is serious for her age, and she never accepts it as a compliment because it is the only way she knows how to be.

The bulk of her hair lies posed in its bed. Parts of it shine when the chamber light hits it, like scales on a snake.

Selyse never makes a conscious decision. 

She puts away her brushes, makes certain that her table is immaculate, as the rest of the room always is. She fixes her braid, and pulls out a book to read. When the time is right, she begins the long task of pinning her hair up for dinner, before calling for her maid and exiting the room. She closes the door silently behind her, and never tells a soul.

*

They tell her that she must be married. 

At eighteen, she’s on the cusp of being branded an old maid, and has done little and less to endear herself to the young lords and knights of the Reach. Her uncle despairs a little. Selyse’s dowry is exceedingly modest, but he had thought to marry her off on exoticism alone. 

But it is not to be. Selyse dances stiffly with every second son and landed knight that she is instructed to, goes on stonily silent walks, entertains visitors with only a modicum of impatience. It all comes to naught. The young man will make an imprudent remark, pull a face when he sees her with her hair up, or attempt to touch her hair, and Selyse will respond appropriately. Never in a way that crosses the line into _unladylike behaviour_ , but always sternly and viciously enough that they don’t come back.

Her cousins attempt to help her. Delena visits often, flirting with everyone she deigns worthy of her attentions, and her standards are not especially stringent. She tries to counsel Selyse in her ways, to no avail. When first instructed to bat her eyelashes, Selyse picks up her skirts, leaves the room and doesn’t look back. Melessa quietly charms every man she encounters, but her methods are no more appealing to Selyse. To be meek and dutiful is one thing, but to be meek and dutiful in a way that men find attractive is quite another. 

It isn’t that Selyse balks at the idea of marriage; she has quite accepted that it shall have to happen. A small part of her looks forward to it. What she cannot endure is pretence, and courtship is full of it. Men do not like her; it is quite plain to see. They do not like her looks, her manner, her small dowry or the fact that she stands over six feet tall, and looks down on most of them. When they pretend to like her, it irritates her endlessly.

There have been offers, of course; no few men are enticed by the prospect of being wedded to the golden flower of the Reach. But as ready as Lord Florent is to see his niece married, he is a proud man, and will not entertain every hedge knight trying his luck. Selyse has golden dragons floating above her head, and he intends to see some kind of profit for her loss.

As the search for a husband goes on, there come rumblings of war from the capital. The young king she met all those years ago isn’t so young any more, or so like to smile, or take time to meet odd girls from the far reaches of his kingdom. The whispers against him are many, even here in the Reach, where the dragons still fly tall amidst the flowers and foxes and apples. Selyse wonders if he ever thinks of her, if he still keeps those stolen strands of her hair. It’s no use speculating whether or not he’d ever figured out her secret; if he had, she would be dead or something worse.

Blood has already been spilt, forces are rallying in the North and in the Stormlands, and the keep grows quieter for its lack of men. Many of Selyse’s suitors go off to war; she wonders how many of them will come back.

*

When the dust has settled, they have a new king. 

Selyse isn’t sorry to see the Targaryens go, and knows nothing about Robert Baratheon that would sway her opinion on the matter. After the long siege at Storm’s End, the Tyrells have dutifully bent the knee, and most of their bannermen follow suit. Her uncle Alester returns home no worse for wear, and the keep celebrates.

Life goes on. Melessa is married to Lord Tarly, and Selyse never knows her opinion, if any, on the matter; she is wedded and whisked off before they have time for more than a few words between them. More of Selyse’s suitors come and go, and they all seem to leave quite a bit quicker than they arrive. At her uncle’s behest, she takes to standing at a tower window of an evening, her hair loose and slung out. If the wind is heavy enough, it will pick up and play with the strands, holding them up like golden threads against the sky. She never asks why; it’s apparent enough on its own, and she doesn’t think she’ll be satisfied with whatever answer she’s given. The reports come back to her in trickles. It is said that the sight can be seen for miles; families plod out of their homes and travellers stop on their journeys to watch it. 

Selyse stands, endures it for as long as she must, and then leaves for her room to clean off the inevitable dust and leaves. She has a few terse arguments with her uncle about the pointlessness of the exercise, and over time, the frequency of her tower showings decrease.

Those first few weeks were enough, however. Word travels up the Roseroad over the ensuing weeks and months, and soon enough, someone at the court remembers that there is a young woman living at the mouth of the Honeywine, with hair that is spun from gold. Hair that had once, very momentarily, entranced a king.

*

Robert takes one look at her, winces, and waves her away.

Selyse moves back to her seat in Highgarden’s Great Hall, glad not to be detained any further. He would have no doubt gotten a long view of her hair from afar, but as with many others, what he sees up close is enough to turn him away. 

At her seat, her head suddenly jerks back, and Selyse spins around with a sharp word on her tongue. But as she should have guessed, it is no servant or lord who has tread on her hair. The king has waylaid Elsie, charged with holding up the train of her hair at tonight’s feast. One of his massive hands makes a fist in Selyse’s hair, inspecting it idly, while the rest of his attention is devoted to leering at her maid. Selyse grinds her teeth in wordless fury, and stands stock still in wait while the king finishes.

By contrast, her meeting with the king’s brother goes quite well.

They are back at Brightwater Keep. Uncle Alester fidgets around the castle hours in advance, and Delena and Rhea offer to help her with her toilet. Offers that she declines, as per usual. As with any other visit from a potential suitor, she instructs Elsie curtly through the preparation of her hair and dress. The gown is one of her best; worthy of a king’s brother.

She is standing without the keep with her family when the party arrives. Stannis Baratheon is tall, perhaps a little taller than she is, well-groomed, with a serious face and handsome eyes. He singles her out immediately, looks at the lengthy fall of her hair with something like irritation. Introductions are made, and they are soon enough left to their own devices.

They walk around the garden in mostly silence. Stannis does not move to take her arm, and Selyse does not offer it. He asks no impudent questions, and indeed does not seek to conduct any sort of meandering chitchat at all. His conversation is limited to the essential: greeting her, the necessary polite inquiries, pointing out a stone that she might trip over, suggesting that they head back. He does not mention her hair at all. Selyse approves. His voice is a bark, and he speaks like every word must be earned, but Selyse doesn’t mind. She has heard sharper things.

*

It is the first visit of many. 

Stannis is Master of Ships, Lord of Dragonstone and brother to the king besides; he does not venture into the Reach often. But when he does, Selyse’s uncle welcomes him with open arms and an expectant smile.

He visits at the behest of his brother; that is not difficult to see. Stannis is as uncomfortable around women as a dragon at sea, and while she finds him more than tolerable, Selyse puts no special effort into putting him at ease. That duty seems to be relegated to the common-looking man he is often accompanied by, a man Selyse might have never noticed if not for the fact that Stannis spoke to him more often and less curtly than most.

The path before her is clear in her mind; if Stannis asks for her hand, her uncle will certainly acquiesce. And she will not be displeased. Stannis is dependable, a war hero, not a frivolous bone in his body. Her hair inspires neither lust nor fascination in him; the only comment he has ever made in regards to it is, “It seems unwieldly.”

“It is,” Selyse had replied, and the topic thus ended. 

He is ideal in a way that she cannot expect to ever have replicated. The politics of the match are evident; the Florents are the most prominent family in the Reach, only second to their liege lords. After the Tyrells’ overwhelming show of Targaryen support during the war, the king wants to secure loose ends, make family ties, prepare for every possible scenario. But more than that, to Selyse, Stannis is a comfortable mirror image, someone with whom she can coexist easily.

In the slow years that pass, she becomes even more impatient with her other, infrequent suitors: the boys who only want to grab at her hair, the old men whose lasciviousness plays out plainly on their faces. When it finally happens, whether at the behest of the king or by Stannis’ own design, she is prepared. Her uncle runs into her room with a triumphant yell, letter gripped in hand. Selyse stands, lips pressed together, accepts Lord Florent’s congratulations, and goes off to see her aunt to begin preparations. 

*

They tell her that it is just the beginning.

The wedding is not as small as she would have liked, but as she is marrying the king’s brother, she cannot expect otherwise. To her deep displeasure, an army of maids come together to scrub her from head to toe with lavender, prepare her hair, pluck her eyebrows and moustache, help her into her dress. By the time they’re finished, she feels like a new woman, but the looking glass shows her the same pale-faced, pale-eyed lady, with thin lips and large ears tucked behind her golden curls. Selyse glowers at her reflection before turning away. Vanity had never served her, and she won’t start now.

The ceremony takes place at Storm’s End, with the beginnings of a gale roaring in the bay. Selyse feels no different with the heavy cloak of the stags on her shoulders (the weight cannot remotely compare), nor after the cold dry press of Stannis’ lips to hers. She’s old enough now not to expect anything momentous; no crashing instant of realisation or joy, no lighting streak across her mind’s sky. She is a married woman now. It is as simple as that. 

Robert is in attendance, so there is of course drink in abundance. His booming voice is everywhere, cutting through every silence with roaring laughter and raucous tales. Selyse sits in place at the high table, lips pursed, and can almost hear Stannis’ teeth grinding next to her. Her hair is piled up on cushions behind her, braided up with silver stag embellishments, on display for the rest of the Hall to see. A tiny headache dances between her temples. 

When Robert has disappeared (to deflower her cousin, as she will later discover), someone calls for the bedding ceremony. Selyse and Stannis both veto the suggestion in the same harsh breath. Unfortunately, the drunk soldier persists, opining on the colour and length of the hair on Selyse’s womanly parts. Rage makes her see spots, but she is calm enough to let Stannis handle the situation as he sees fit. The onion knight and one of his fellows grab the soldier by the arms, and her husband shoots to his feet.

“Outside,” Stanns growls. “Twenty lashes.”

“Thirty,” Selyse says for his ears only, and without missing a beat, Stannis delivers the order again. 

“Thirty lashes.”

Whatever the drunk might hope to say in his defence, he cannot say it quickly enough, and soon his voice is lost to the commotion of the hall. Stannis retakes his seat, picks up his fork, and they continue their first meal as man and wife. 

*

For a time, they split their days between King’s Landing and Dragonstone.

The Red Keep is much changed from her childhood visit. Gone are the dragonbones, the fiery tapestries, the atmosphere of unhappy oppression. In its place are golden stags, merriment when least expected, and yet the same, vague sense of oppressiveness. 

If not for the novelty of her appearance, Selyse doubts that Robert would remember to demand her presence. She has no friends here and expects to find none; Lysa Arryn looks at her with guarded disdain, and the queen seems determined not to acknowledge her existence. Selyse catches her betimes, however, throwing looks of what might be envy of the thick ropes of her golden hair. It chokes her with annoyance, more than anything.

Dragonstone, her new home, is a horse of a different colour. It is colder, wetter, and lonelier. Selyse learns what it is like to run her own household. In the first few days she’s introduced to old Maester Cressen, Septon Barre, the cook, the witless fool, and all the rest. Elsie, with her since adolescence, follows wherever she goes. Her uncle Axell also comes over from the Reach, to serve as castellan of this sombre castle when Stannis is away at court. It is strange to think that she now occupies the childhood home of past Targaryen kings, but Selyse, as ever, is not one to be cowed.

Stannis is as easy to live with as she had predicted, chiefly because he leaves her be. They sleep in different rooms, occupy different spaces in their waking hours, and often eat at different times. They speak when it is necessary, and seldom at any other time. And it’s never painful; neither of them will hesitate to cut across an awkward moment of silence and get to the point. She is as stubborn as he is, and they bicker, inevitably, but they are neither the type to keep a fight going longer than it needs to. It is extremely simple, to coexist. 

Stannis’ work often takes him out of the sphere of her notice for weeks on end, and she is free to spend her time as she pleases. Usually, this means directing the cleaning at Dragonstone, reading, doing needlework, writing letters, praying, maintaining her hair and worrying over the question of heirs. After a year of marriage, her moon’s blood continues to come, month after month. Stannis visits her bed every moon, where they spend several sticky and uncomfortable minutes together, and nothing has come of it yet. The shadow of Robert and Delena still looms in her mind, and though she tries not to, she cannot help but think of the healthy bastard babe her cousin has given birth to. 

The idea of motherhood has never especially appealed to Selyse, but she is too old for ideas. She is the wife of the king’s brother; she _must_ bear children or fail in her first duty as a woman. It brings back old bitter feelings, the child in Selyse that doesn’t want to do anything that she doesn’t have to, but this is a different world. She has to.

*

The travelling back and forth might be tiresome, but Selyse never balks at it, no matter how many noises Cressen makes about her constitution. Robert mandates her attendance at feasts and celebrations, mainly as an attraction for nobles to gawk at. She cares little for it, but has never been a woman given to complaints.

The ships’ captains have always explained that the journeys from King’s Landing are always much calmer than the ones going to the capital, a matter to do with the tides and the winds. But today, Dragonstone arching high and dark against a cloudy sky, she would swear that they’d all lied. The ship sways like a single tree in a grassy field, and she feels queasy and irritable, like she has insects stuck beneath her clothes. The humidity is a perfect hell, making her scalp sweat and in turn making her desperate for a bath and a hair wash. Those luxuries, however, will have to wait for land.

Eventually, her discomfort drives her to the deck, the sailors be damned. She walks past a knot of them as she makes her way to the port side; the more civilised amongst them bow to her, their eyes following the golden sparkle of her braid. Selyse picks her way across tarp and rope, the bulk of her hair cradled in her arms, and leans up against the gunwale.

She already feels a bit better; the motion of the ship doesn’t feel nearly as dramatic. She expects she will be accosted eventually; many of the sailors are apparently uncomfortable at having a woman in their presence while they work. Her prediction comes true very shortly, but not quite in the way she expected.

“Are you cold?” Stannis asks, approaching her evenly.

In reply, Selyse taps the end bit of her braid that is wrapped around her neck like a scarf, as has long been her custom. “No.”

Stannis furrows his brow, an act that seems accented by his consistently thinning hair. He is experienced enough aboard ships to know what is bothering her, and she knows he won’t bother with banal inquiries after her wellbeing; he gets straight to be point.

“Do not stand so close to the edge,” he says crisply. 

“Why?”

A muscle in his face twitches. “The sea is calm for now, but it may not last.”

Selyse remains rooted where she is, one hand on the gunwale. She sniffs. “I am no delicate flower, to be tossed overboard by a simple wind.”

“Don’t be tiresome, Selyse,” her husband snaps. “The crew won’t be eager to mount a rescue in this weather.”

“They will not be required to,” she retorts testily. “I can float, I can climb, and I have rope aplenty.”

It is the kind of reply that could tilt the conversation in any way; Selyse does not especially like provoking her husband, but she is well aware that she might. Instead, one of his eyebrows arches high, and he glances down at her hair. A year and more of marriage has not endeared him to it; Selyse indeed cannot remember him ever touching it. When he emits a sound that might in another man be a bark of laughter, Selyse’s hackles simmer down.

“Do as you will, then,” he says.

“I shall,” she assures him, and takes a small step backward. She will concede that much. If Stannis notices, he does not deign to comment; he turns crisply on his heel and walks away. Selyse settles in to enjoy the calm and the salty sea air.

Seven months later, Shireen is born.

*

It happens while Stannis is at war. The Greyjoy Rebellion is in full swing, and Stannis, his Onion Knight and his ships had left months ago, sailing around the borders of Westeros. Stannis had been called off while her belly was small, but still showing, and he’d left her instructions with regard to names, if the babe arrived in his absence. Steffon, for a boy; Shireen for a girl. 

The birth is a hard one. Shireen comes reluctantly over the course of twelve hours. Cressen’s voice is like a croak in her ears, no matter how soothing he tries to be, and Selyse maintains a vice-like grip on Elsie’s hand throughout the entirety of the painful, sweaty ordeal. 

When they place her daughter in her arms for the first time, Selyse’s heart seizes up. The fear that she had not openly acknowledged seeps out of her pores; her child’s hair is a faint dark down against her pale skin. The relief almost shakes her. The midwives make tittering sounds of commiseration, murmuring that it would have been grand to carry the trait, some of the golden magic, into the Baratheon line. Selyse snaps at them to be quiet or be damned, and she looks at her whimpering, soft daughter, looks at her, looks at her, drowns in her. 

She would have never expected anything that she and Stannis made to be so soft.

Three women come up from the village; Selyse conducts thorough interviews before choosing a wet-nurse. As she was born several weeks before expected, Cressen is also tasked to keep a careful eye on her. Over the next few weeks, as Selyse recovers from the birth, she visits Shireen whenever possible, holding her awkwardly, checking her hair. It grows at a snail’s pace, and remains the same Baratheon black. For the first time in forever, Selyse mutters a hurried prayer of thanks to the Seven. It feels awkward and clunky on her lips, but fitting all the same.

All the appropriate letters are written and sent. As the replies and congratulations come trickling in, Selyse remembers that she is supposed to be disappointed. Any highborn woman would see it so. She has borne her husband a daughter, after all, where it was clearly her responsibility to have delivered a son. 

She lets her daughter grasp gently at her outstretched finger, tickles beneath her nose with a lock of her golden hair. The disappointment can wait.

*

They tell her that her daughter is dying.

The greyscale sets in a mere two weeks after Stannis has returned. They aren’t sure of the source; it creeps upon her rapidly, over the course of a few days. Selyse feels her heart constrain tighter and tighter by the minute, sees the lines draw deeper around Stannis’ mouth and eyes, looking at the daughter that he now cannot touch. Her husband does not do well with emotions, and neither does she, but she can tell this is the most distressed that she has ever seen him.

Shireen shakes and cries in her little cot, and the grey sickness creeps over her skin.

The thought is slow to occur to Selyse, but once it does she flies to put it into action. She has thought so little of it over the years, done so much to hide it from others that she has almost obscured it from herself. She has no idea if it will work, no idea if she is being foolish in exposing herself, so idea if she can actually save Shireen this way. Whatever enchantment there is in her hair, there is said to be magic in greyscale as well; evil magic. But this is what she’s been building towards; she’s sure of it. Twenty-four years of continuous growth and weight have brought her here, and she _must_ try.

Her heart beats wildly as she strides to the sickroom, gathering up her hair, stumbling over it sometimes. This is not even a sacrifice; she does it gladly.

Cressen and Stannis are there, speaking tersely over Shireen’s covered cot. Selyse doesn’t bother to announce herself; she grabs the maester by the shoulder and turns him towards her.

“You must cut off my hair,” she says urgently. “All of it.”

The old man looks at her vacantly for a few seconds, before pity creeps into his eyes. “My lady…”

“Do not look at me like that, old man,” she warns. Before she can explain, Stannis’ voice cracks like a whip.

“Selyse—”

“ _Stannis_ ,” she snaps right back, spinning to look into her husband’s eyes. They are creased with silent worry, and now anger. Selyse grabs his wrist, and it’s surprising enough that he doesn’t speak for a moment. It’s more contact than they have had in months. She switches her gaze from the man to the maester.

“You must both listen to me, and do exactly as I say. No matter how daft it seems, you both know I have no patience for sallies, and especially not now, when my child is _dying_.”

Her voice goes unexpectedly shrill at the end, and she can feel emotion rising in her throat. Stannis stares at her as if she’s grown another head. Selyse takes the time to collect her breath, and starts again, eyes boring into them.

“You must do exactly as I say. We’ll start with cutting off my hair.”

*

She tells herself that she made the right choice, and this she knows with all her soul.

Shireen is quiet and solemn for a four year old, permanently attached to the simple books that she is already learning to read, more at home with herself than with others. She speaks softly and haltingly, frequently bringing her dark hair forward hide her face, hide the greyscale scars that they had not been able to prevent. Selyse doesn’t stop her often, but sometimes she’ll tilt her daughter’s face up by the chin, and tuck the true black strands behind her ears. Sometimes she’ll receive a rare smile in return.

Selyse’s hair has gone the way of the Florents; flat, brown and lifeless. It flares about her shoulders, getting stringier as the years go by. Cutting it all off at the neck had seemed to shock it, and over the weeks, the gold had faded and died. She feels so light, as if walking is floating, and years later it is still hard to adjust, difficult to reconcile being able to coif her hair unattended if she wishes, to move freely about her home without planning each step in advance. It’s a feeling close to joy, a feeling that almost touches being able to hold her daughter in her arms again. 

Her family has sent inquiring letters that she answers with terse half-truths. She receives long, searching looks at court, perhaps more so than before. Robert guffaws when he first sees her after the change, so hard that he has to gasp for breath, and says that she and Stannis are now finally a matching set. Even his wife laughs. Selyse endures it, stone-faced. All in all, it seems a much easier burden to bear.

The great, snake-like coil of her hair lies locked in a trunk beneath her bed. She doesn’t know if it still holds its magic, and she doesn’t seek to find out. Perhaps it will always be there, the greatest weight she’s ever thrown off. Perhaps she will one day commit it to flame, like all the other strands shed over the years. 

It is a decision for a later time.

Cressen and Stannis do not have to be sworn to secrecy; it goes without saying that this cannot be told. The old maester seems a little frightened of her; it’s a feeling that Selyse doesn’t mislike. She’s still unsure of how the revelation has affected her relationship with her husband. He treats her the same as always; leaves her to herself until her has to bed her (and sometimes even then), speaks to her with the same clipped seriousness that he uses for everyone. 

Everyone except Shireen. When she sees Stannis with their daughter, awkwardly patting her shoulder or sternly reading to her from a book, Selyse feels very calm. They will never love each other; she isn’t foolish enough to expect it. But combined, they have put one good thing into the world.

Selyse is not the best mother. She’s impatient, snaps when she shouldn’t, and is often cold when she ought to be warm. But for Shireen she feels a profound affection that halts her in her tracks, makes her wonder at her own depth. The saying of it is hard, and trying and failing to express it makes her more distant. But sometimes, knowing that she feels it is enough.

Shireen Baratheon has her father’s square face and her mother’s protruding ears, and a sweetness that is all her own. Selyse gazes at her in the moments they spend together, sometimes reaching out to touch the greyscale scars in a way that makes her daughter turn her face shyly, as if ashamed, as if she were ugly. It is not so. Selyse might never find the words to tell her, but the stone is more precious than any gold.


End file.
